


Neither Meat Nor Drink

by jellyfishline



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, One Shot, Poverty, Pre-Series, Sam POV, Starvation, a little bit artsy, a little bit rambly, food insecurity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-15
Updated: 2014-04-15
Packaged: 2018-01-19 11:41:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1468156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jellyfishline/pseuds/jellyfishline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even years after fire strangled your life again, you still sometimes woke up from nightmares of Jess starving while you tore bites of fried chicken from the bone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Neither Meat Nor Drink

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from my favorite Edna St.Vincent Millay poem, "Love is not all."

When she met you, you were halfway through an entire box of Pop Tarts.

The strangest thing about college, you were starting to realize, was the constant presence of food. You'd never realized how close you always were to starving, before. Not really. You knew when you didn't have food, of course—when you were hungry, when the money dad left had gone thin, when there were empty cans in the trash and no full ones in the bags or the makeshift pantries. You knew the crease in Dean's brow that when you were a kid meant 'dad needs to come back soon' and when you grew up a bit you figured out meant 'I haven't eaten in two days.' Dean always went hungry first, when food was low. You never protested that. Even when you knew better. Even when you should've.

No one was hungry here. That was so strange. Of course it wasn't strange at all—of course kids rich enough to afford college could afford to at least keep themselves fed. But it was strange to you, because to you life had always been about food—not having it, wanting it, waiting for it, thinking about it. _We'll eat in an hour, Sammy, I'm busy now. Can't eat yet, Sammy, wait till we get to the motel/McDonalds/rest stop. You ate an hour ago Sammy, shut up. I don't care you're still hungry. We gotta make it last, okay?_

Here, food was everywhere, anytime, always. Food was in cafeterias and backpacks. Food was in hallways and classrooms. Kids ate in class like they never had in highschool while professors looked on. You once watched a girl eat an entire bag of fried chicken in the front row of a Math lecture. It was hard to pay attention to anything else—you kept looking over your shoulder as if you expected someone to share in the spectating, some commentary or reprimand. None came.

Kids ate between classes while walking with their heads down, on the steps of the library and sometimes even tucked in amongst the books. Kids piled their trays high with a glory of cafeteria rib-sticking crap and had the audacity to complain about the taste. It was exhilarating. Food was everywhere. It was so ubiquitous, even to you, even to some smelly teenager with two bucks to his name and a hard-won scholarship, that now, for the first time in your life, you could truly eat whenever you were hungry and stop when you were full, every meal and between meals too, just like how God intended.

By your second semester you'd probably get so fat they'd have to roll you out of bed to get to class, but you didn't care. This was Heaven on a bun.

You had an entire box of Pop Tarts. You could eat the whole thing yourself without saving some for Dean or feeling guilty for not giving Dean any. There was nothing stopping you from devouring it down to the wrappers.

Except, of course, for her.

“Wow,” she said. “You've got quite an appetite, don't you.”

 _You should see my brother, ___you thought, but didn't say, because Dean belonged to a world so far from this, so far from food-anywhere-anytime, that even bringing him up to a stranger was out of the question. Instead, you said, “Comes with being six and a half feet tall.”

She laughed. You weren't trying to be funny. But then, Jess didn't have to find something funny to laugh at it. A lot of times she laughed for no real reason at all.

She was glad to be alive. That was the thing—that was why it was so hard to let her go, after. Because for all her faults and for all of yours, for all the irreconcilable differences that fractured the memorials you made for her, for all the ways she was perfect and the ways she was not, the ways she was yours and the ways she was out of your grasp (and you knew she was, even then) she was always completely, painfully, _alive. ___Even when she was angry, sad, there was something about her that vibrated energy, that radiated this intense, blooming fierceness under your breastbone. Her heart beat like it wanted to burst out of her chest, her blood pounded, her eyes _danced. ___She was a little like Dean in that way, you thought more than once—neither of them were ever really still, not even for the shortest of moments. Not even while sleeping.

But she was also nothing like Dean. She ran from nothing, she hid nothing, and there was nothing, right up to the end, that she really seemed to fear.

That didn't mean she was devoid of worry, though. It took you a long time to name the emotion that crept into her eyes sometimes when she watched you, talked to you. There were bad days, sometimes, bad moments—times when it felt like the two of you had grown up in different countries, speaking languages that could never be learned by a non-native speaker. Days you were an imposter and she was a curious scientist, watching the gorilla lumber through an unknown habitat and pretend he was a real man.

For example:

The way you hoarded things was something she found endlessly amusing and confusing and worrying, by turns. She'd find the stash of toilet paper in the closet or the giant bottle of detergent or the fifty cans of tomato soup in the pantry and ask you, patiently, what it was all _for._ You tried to tell her it was on sale, there were coupons, stuff lasted forever, you didn't want to run out, money was tight—and she'd look at you and hear you and nod like it made sense, but you knew she didn't understand. She still thought you were like some redneck in a bunker, piling up for the day the commies finally invaded. 

She didn't know there were other, more everyday apocalypses to worry about.

She didn't know what it was like to be so hungry you would clean the inside of a cold can of soup with your tongue, cut yourself on the raw metal edge just to get every last drop.

She didn't know what it was like to watch your brother slowly hollow out into a husk. To think about giving him half of your hamburger and decide not to, because you were so, so hungry—and when dad came back and you were full again, feel guilty for weeks, feel _tainted,_ because you knew in a way that didn't have words that you weren't starving, you were just _selfish._ You would let Dean starve a dozen times if it meant keeping your belly full.

You were an awful kid.

Sometimes you thought about watching that hunger happen to her. And then you'd go to the store and buy ten cans of ravioli, put them in the pantry with the others. You'd feel a bit better, after that, but the fear never left you all the way. It left scars on you the way hunger did, in invisible, intimate places. Even years after fire strangled your life again, you still sometimes woke up from nightmares of Jess starving while you tore bites of fried chicken from the bone.

Worry. It was what made Jess give you strange looks at the grocery store and what made you make her coffee when she was up studying on a late night—she always was too hard on herself, wasn't she, always pushing for brilliant, better, best. It was what lead to some of the deepest, most vulnerable conversations you shared and some of the worst fights. Fights that happened because Jess felt like she was holding onto smoke and you felt like she was gripping you by the throat, like she knew too much and not enough, like you were—irreconcilable. Fights that ended in tears but still rung in both ears, hanging open at the end like a question.

Until some hours later when you'd make her coffee and set it down by her pile of notebooks, or she'd track you to some quiet corner of a hideaway and place a kiss on your forehead. It was never surrender, those little acts of gratitude and making-peace, just a temporary truce. _I'll tell you everything,_ you wanted to say, _but not yet. Not now. Let me have a few more minutes of this bliss._

You told yourself you kept it secret to keep her safe, but that wasn't true. Knowledge of the things in the dark would hurt her as much as her ignorance—you knew from experience that ignorance never guaranteed you a happy ending. And even if you weren't going to tell her about _that_ , there was so much else—Dean. Dad. Starving and motel rooms and fires and dead mothers. The first girl you kissed. The first movie you saw in a theater, the one Dean snuck you into and you didn't know he hadn't paid for a ticket until a man in a red uniform tossed you both out onto the street—and you cried because you didn’t get to see how it ended. You could tell her those things, the memories good and bad. You didn't. You lived in two worlds, and you wanted them separate. You were so _selfish. ___

But those were the bad days and the restless nights. On good days, you and Jess were a team. Unstoppable force and immoveable object, working together to conquer the everyday unending trials of college life. If you'd been in opposition, the two of you could've destroyed planets. Together, you made canned soup and instant coffee and had conversations about philosophy on the stairs. Jess was a pacifist with a firm belief in non-violence. You admired her for that—or you tried to, but deep down, you couldn't shake the feeling that she was more naïve than noble.

You scared her one day in a passing conversation about gun regulation. You got unexpectedly passionate.

You couldn't help it, thinking about her, defenseless and fragile against the dark forces of the world. Guns weren't much help against vampires or ghosts, but it was better than nothing. Better than listening to her talk as if all enemies could be defeated, all tense situations disarmed with words and a little compassion. But the truth was, Jess didn't need a gun. She needed you to be honest about what you'd seen in the dark.

You didn't tell her. You couldn't. Maybe she was naïve, but it was a precious and beautiful innocence you couldn't destroy. She was so happy in her ignorance. There wasn't any reason, you told yourself, to ruin it now.

You never told her about your father. Nevertheless, you still felt she knew too much. The shocked look in her eyes when you accidentally let it slip that you could field strip a rifle when you were ten. When you mentioned how he used to make you run laps as a kid, over and over, tail-chasing circles to keep you in shape, to punish you for your endless mistakes and misdemeanors. When you whispered that you hadn't talked to him since the day you got the scholarship. 

She was there the day Dean called you to ask if you were ever coming home. Your voice shook. You hated him so much in that moment—for talking to you with that too-easy charm in his voice like it'd been five minutes since you'd last spoken instead of five months, for still being with dad, despite everything, for being dad's favorite, still, no matter what either of you did. It was all you could do to keep from screaming, from slamming down the phone without a word, from getting into your car and driving wherever he was and apologizing for getting out when he couldn't.

You told him to forget your number. You told Jess you didn't want to talk about it.

There was so much you didn’t want to talk about. So many questions that Jess never even thought to ask. There were times—no, there was a constant feeling in you, a knowledge that the man she loved wasn’t you, wasn’t _real._ She loved you, edited, abridged, boxed and packaged for public consumption. She never knew about the fights you got into, with Dad, with Dean, with the whole goddamn world. She never cleaned the blood from your knuckles, or the scars from your shoulders, or pried the weight of the world off your back. She didn’t know your darkness. You never showed her your capacity for violence, your affinity with Death.

When you went out to eat, you always ordered salad. It started as a joke—Jess was big into health foods, and when she ordered a salad on your first real date you made a face. She told the waiter to bring two, instead, and so she dared you into eating a meal of nothing but overpriced dressing and lettuce. It was the most insubstantial, transient meal you’d ever eaten.

You were surprised how much you liked it.

The food didn’t weigh on you, gut, wallet or conscience the way greasy hamburgers and Mac ‘n Cheese did. It was a smart choice, good for you. It wasn’t like you needed all the extra calories anyway, now that you were out of the life forever. And so you kept ordering salads. Jess always smiled at you, and her approval felt more palpable than anything you’d ever had before in your life. The salads were one real thing you shared, that you both agreed on, that wasn’t pretend or a joke or a lie of omission.

The home you shared was built out of wilted lettuce and olive. There are days you wonder if you didn’t need a fire or a Big Bad Wolf to send it crashing down. Perhaps it would’ve happened anyway, with no one’s help but yours.

The worst part isn’t that it was hard to lie to her. It’s that it was easy. Easy to compartmentalize your life into then and now, me and them, Jess and not-Jess.

You played at honesty like children playing house. You could sacrifice it without remorse—after all, it was only make-believe.

So that’s what you did. You played with her. Toyed with her. Pretended that your scars came from your dad’s rage and not his legacy. You told her stories. You censored the letters. You sacrificed everything to keep your little bubble free of dad and Dean and nightmares and uncomfortable conversations.

You sacrificed Jess, because you would rather have her dead than answer one single question. By the time you realized you’d done it, the terrible, unforgivable thing you’d done, it was too late.

That’s always how the story goes, isn’t it?

There are no Gods in this machine. Just angels, devils and men, trying to make some sense of the wheels and cogs He left behind. They have their good intentions and their myopic self-obsessions, and together make the grease that slicks your way to Hell.

You know now why Dean works on his car. Bent over, sweat and grease on his brow, fiddling and tinkering even when nothing is wrong. Why he always celebrates Christmas and watches shitty TV and wears dad’s leather jacket.

Why you eat salads.

We need little constants in life to keep us sane. Keep us anchored. Keep us feeling like there’s control among the chaos.

We all need food in easy reach. That’s what parents are supposed to give you—the tools to keep the hunger pangs at bay. Dad never taught you that. He taught you to expect a kick to the gut when you need a meal. He taught Dean to give until he breaks. And Dean taught you to take, and take, and take.

You like the bitter leaves, the spiny ones, the vinegar dressings. You like to feel Jess’s death in every bite.

It doesn’t fill you, but you’ve learned to make your peace with hunger.

**Author's Note:**

> If you'd like to ask prying questions about the creation of this fic, or just find a buddy who will weep about Sam Winchester and the rest of Team Free Will with you, you can find me at jellyfishline.tumblr.com.


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